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Future of Holocaust Education in the Digital Era

06.01.2011

When youngsters prefer to read only what their friends have written in their social networks and click "like"- how can we encourage them to learn about the Holocaust?

 

Op-Ed by Ambassador Jacob Rosen

The State of Israel and another 27 democratic states, most of them European, are members of the ITF (The Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research).  The Task Force was established in 2000 in Stockholm, by the then Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson, who was surprised to discover that high school students in his country lacked basic knowledge about the Holocaust.

 

States which have joined the ITF so far have committed themselves to introduce the Holocaust to the high schools curricula, to mark the international Holocaust Remembrance Day, to preserve Holocaust related sites, to establish memorials and museums, open their archives and combat Holocaust denial.  This is a serious challenge from every angle: beginning with introducing an extra subject to the school curriculum, preparing and training teachers, translating materials to the local languages, allocating resources for sites, preservation and building museums and research institutes.

The idea behind the ITF is the necessity to understand the unprecedented-ness of the Holocaust which left a deep mark on the 20th century and thus to be able to diagnose as early as possible the signs and plotting of another genocide somewhere around the globe.

It is evident that all this requires directives from the political echelons and parallel to the educational systems there is a need for action at the legislative and judicial branches.

So how can we reach all these bodies in this era of Internet, iPods and Blackberry's-when most of the youngsters do not read newspapers or watch the news and get their information and headlines from online sources?

How shall we motivate high school students in 2015 to read a book about the Holocaust when the bookstores' colorful display windows are losing their appeal to electronic reading pads, and when the youngsters prefer to read only what their friends write online and "like."

What will the backpack of a high school teenager look like in 5 years time?  Will it contain notebooks and textbooks or only a flat screen and a sandwich?

How can we attract the attention of parliamentarian assistants and their bosses to the Holocaust issue and its ramifications?  How can we manage to seat simultaneously 20-30 decision makers and law enforcement officers in 3-4 different places around the world to listen together to a 1 hour relevant lecture through a video conference?

One must remember that these key persons are busy simultaneously also with issues of human rights, coping with Islamophobia  and the situation of the Roma, even if we are convinced that the Holocaust memory and its lessons are the most important.

Israel which serves as the ITF Chair 2010 (The Chairman is Dan Tichon, the previous Speaker of the Israeli Parliament)  tries to pave the road to cope with these challenges and harnesses all the experiences that have been accumulated in Israel- both in the educational system, the academia and at "Yad Vashem".  Visits to concentration camps and museums are certainly effective- the UK, for several years already has been running a project which sends two high school students every year on  a one day visit to Auschwitz- but this is an expensive project and difficult to apply in Europe and North America.

It is evident that the digital alternative, even if it is applied successfully and effectively, will provide only a partial response to these questions.  Another principal issue, keeping in mind the challenges which mankind faces is whether to limit the Holocaust memory and its lessons to Israel, Europe (where the Holocaust took place) and in a number of central States which opened their gates to Holocaust survivors (UK, Canada and Argentina) or to widen the scope to the developing democracies in Latin America, the Pacific and Asia.  It is recommended and necessary to develop Holocaust awareness there as well because these regions are also not immune to the worst.

 

This article was published in YNet.com, the electronic edition of the Israel Daily "Yehidot Ahronot" on December 10, 2010.

Ambassador Jacob Rosen is the diplomatic coordinator of the Israeli Chairmanship (2010) of the ITF.